Just came across an interesting column from Francis Fukuyama published in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. The column is a wide ranging commentary on current state of world. It is about impact of financial crises of 2008 on western world, nature of protests around the world, drawbacks of existing form of capitalism and democracy, few alternatives to the existing model and finally, rough outline for next social model to come. The points he discussed may sound disparate but the narrative he weaved succinctly captures the common thread. Highlight of the column was his commentary on drawbacks of existing model of democracy and capitalism. Ye he asserts that for a new model take hold democracy and some sort of capitalism has to be in the mix. He also stress on importance of middle class as they play decisive role establishing and maintaining a social system. I couldn’t agree more with these points but what got my attention him completely discounting the impact of rapidly changing environment and general deterioration of natural resources. For me environment will prove the decisive factor in shaping our world in this century.
From the dawn of human history we have been adversely impacting environment in one way or another. But still last hundred years has been unique, and not necessarily in a good way. The scale of environmental destruction, pollution and annihilation has been shocking. With advancement in technology we pollute on gigantic scale and destroy forests at super-sonic speed. Air pollution has gone up so much that the earth’s temperature has risen substantially in mere hundred years. Ice on North Pole is fast disappearing and weather cycles have changed in various parts of world. Clean air and potable water is increasingly becoming scarce and yet human population is growing at rapid rate.
You can hold me culprit for using excessive hyperbole (oxymoron here!) in presenting my argument. But the situation isn't just bad it’s actually worse. Environmental decline will have direct and immediate effect on communities at micro level and nations at macro level. Scarce resources, polluted land and water and rapidly declining fertile land will force societies to take extreme measures. Social structure may collapse and nations will go to war over water and arable land. China is already on land buying rampage in Africa and South America.
The tale of Somali piracy s quite illustrative. The Somalian pirates gained worldwide attention when they abducted an American ship.But the problem started well before that. Somalia as we all know is a failed state. Taking advantage of this situation fishing ships from far-away countries like Spain and Japan started fishing in Somalian water. We are not talking about few ships throwing their fishing nets in the water. These Spanish and Japanese ships were advanced shipping trawlers that captures thousands of tons of fish in the matter of days. This means scarce fishing for local Somali fisherman. The initial revolt was against these fishing theft. It later spawned into a piracy enterprise when they realized that piracy pays much better than catching fishes is a different story. Why did Japanese and Spanish trawlers fishing in Somali water? Because there’s not enough fish left in their waters!
Can similar situation happen when strong country will invade a weak one because in want to natural resources? To be honest one of the important underlying reason for most of the wars is natural resources. But situation will be exacerbated since nations will be forced to go to war. All the talk about sustaining civilization, implementing capitalistic democratic model, free trade, importance of middle class, oligarchy, monopoly, revolutions, counter-revolutions, modernism, post-modernism, revivalism, fanaticism, secularism, atheism, enlightenment, post-enlightenment, industrial revolution, post-industrial revolution, communism, socialism, dictatorship, religion influenced social models, secular social models and everything in between will be quite irrelevant because in post-environmental we will be forced to wear masks to breath and go to war over water.
We have enough nuclear bombs to destroy earth numerous times but we are not sure if we will have enough water to sustain for next fifty years.
You do the math
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